Weekly visions - week 37, 2026

予言 / Premonition, directed by Norio Tsuruta, co-written with Noboru Takagi, based on Jirō Tsunoda’s manga Newspaper of Terror, Japan, 2004 - ⭐⭐⭐

I watched this J-Horror film by the director of Ring 0 without knowing much more than the premise: a man finds a newspaper with an article reporting on the death of a child, and finds out it’s about his own daughter, and that the fatal accident still has to happen… a few minutes in the future.

From there, without wanting to spoil too much, the film shares a lot of story beats with Ringu, just shifting the point of view from the woman character to the ‘psychic’ husband. One might object that the manga dates back to 1973, but in my understanding the adaptation doesn’t use much of that plot beyond the initial concept.

The appreciation for the whole movie depends on your taste in the genre. I found it reasonably entertaining even if, as with Sadako’s story, the investigation part is quite horror-less, only picking up steam in the last twenty minutes.

Of the main actors, I was only familiar with Noriko Sakai, from Ju-On: The Grudge 2.

I learned that this was part of a ‘J-Horror Theater Series’, also including Shimizu’s Reincarnation (which gives more or less the same vibes), Takahashi’s The Sylvian Experiments and Kurosawa’s, far superior, Retribution. I still miss two films from the collection, with my completionism encouraging me to fill the gaps as soon as possible.

Things Will Be Different, written and directed by Michael Felker, US, 2024 - ⭐⭐½

A short stay in Paris gave me temporary access to the Shadowz platform, and I tried to make the most of it, starting with this film, which has been in my watchlist for a while.

Featuring the familiar-but-I’m-not-really-sure-from-where faces of Riley Dandy, Adam David Thompson and Sarah Bolger, it’s the story of two siblings that lie low after a robbery… in a house in a pocket universe.

As is normal, if your film is produced by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead: feeling like it could easily be a spin-off from The Endless (even the title is reminiscent of Resolution’s final line), this is the feature-length authorial debut by the editor of all the cosmic duo’s films since Spring (he also had a small role in Resolution).

Things could be better: once in their safe house, the characters have to wait a long time before they can go back home… they have nothing to do, so they get bored, and although the two weeks are shown in a montage, this time still feel like an empty, uneventful break in the narrative. And, when the ‘action’ picks up, it’s still very static. The plot then becomes a bit muddled, and - for my taste - unsatisfying or at least unclear, only to end on a kind of non-explanation that not even Justin Benson can sell.

Despite all of this, it’s nice to see how much the director is on the same wavelength as his producers. They must have such a positive collaboration.
Let’s hope he will have other chances to prove his writing and directorial skills: I’m sure things will be different then.

Horror in the High Desert 3: Firewatch, written and directed by Dutch Marich, US, 2024 - ⭐½

No disrespect meant for Dutch Marich - always a lot of admiration for anybody who can shoot a film with no budget, and get it distributed - but this whole series for me should be titled Nothing in the Empty Void: I don’t really share the opinion of reviewers and podcasters who keep promoting these films as scary and unsettling.

In this third instalment, which follows another vlogger tracing the events of the first film, even less happens than in the previous episodes. I felt zero tension, except for when, towards the end, a written panel teased that ‘viewer discretion is advised’.
It turns out, discretion is needed in the sense that the viewer should just turn the film off and walk away, because what follows are fifteen more minutes when absolutely nothing is to be seen.

On the positive side, it seems that the plot is unveiling some ‘mysteries’ left from the other films - I will trust that they were already from the start - so credit where due, it looks like Marich knows where he wants to go with this story.

But I’m out of goodwill. It’s so frustrating and it felt such a waste of time to sit there and spend 88 minutes watching this film.

Fright Night, written and directed by Tom Holland, US, 1985 - ⭐⭐⭐

This was the directorial debut of the writer of Psycho II (insert here obligatory joke about the abundance of Tom Hollands) and I understand it’s a cult movie, so much so that a remake featuring Colin Farrell is available on Disney+. For some reason, it’s virtually unknown in Italy (although… could this be the vampire film that was broadcast in the eighties on a commercial TV channel, and was advertised so much during afternoon TV that a schoolfriend of mine was obsessed with one line of dialogue from the promo? I have been wondering about this mystery for so long… I should find the Italian-dubbed version and check).

I bet everybody reading knows the plot, anyway it’s about a high school student finding out his new neighbour may be a vampire and the culprit for a series of murders that recently happened in town.

The first thing to strike me, is that for a cult film from the eighties, I would have expected to know at least some faces from the cast… but no, except from Roddy McDowell (in the hilariously-named role of the TV vampire killer ‘Peter Vincent’) - whom I wouldn’t have been able to name - everyone else looked like a stranger to me, including, surprisingly, the deliciously threatening Chris Sarandon (I have seen several of his films, but his face didn’t stick). The fact that none of the trio of teenage protagonists (William Ragsdale, Amanda Bearse, Stephen Geoffreys) had a great film career may explain why this movie has stayed ‘hidden’ to me for so long.

The second surprising factor was the plot itself… I expected more twists and turns, and at least an attempt by the alleged vampire to charm our hero, but no, the story proceeds in a very straightforward - dare I say eighties-style - and serious, manner.
I was prepared for something funnier, in a Back to the Future mood, instead this film falls more into Lost Boys territory (in fairness, Brandon had warned me).

I smiled at the clunky screenplay trick of having the protagonist, who’s a hardcore horror fan, running to his best friend to ask him ‘so, how do you get rid of a vampire?’, just for the audience to be on the same page.

Overall, it was a pleasant watch, maybe a bit derivative for what concerns Bearse’s character’s trajectory, and self-indulgent in the third act… but not engaging enough to make me look for the sequel, or rush to watch the remake.

Il Caimano / The Caiman, directed by Nanni Moretti, co-written with Heidrun Schleef, Francesco Piccolo and Federica Pontremoli, Italy, 2006 - ⭐⭐

Five years after La stanza del figlio, Moretti decided to use the international attention attracted by his Palme d’Or to go back to political cinema, in an even more explicit way than in the past.

When Il Caimano was released, twenty years ago, it left me very perplexed due to the lack of amalgamation between its different components. After this rewatch, I have taken some time to reflect on whether I could find a hidden thread, a deeper understanding of this film. I failed, and I am still perplexed.

The plot involves Bruno, a film producer from the seventies (Silvio Orlando, here playing a variation on the character Moretti usually plays himself) trying to keep both his production company and his marriage afloat in the new millennium. He agrees to finance Il Caimano, the debut feature of young director Teresa (Jasmine Trinca, the daughter from La stanza del figlio), realising too late that the shady entrepreneur the screenplay focuses on is the actual Italian Prime Minister. While the Italian film industry runs as fast as possible away from any possible controversy and legal consequences, Bruno’s personal life also falls apart, as his wife Paola (Margherita Buy) wants a divorce.

It’s a human story that (with a few more polishing rewrites, in my opinion) could be itself the sole subject for a film: in Moretti’s declared intention, Il Caimano is a story about life in Italy at the time.
But this plot is interspersed with scenes depicting moments from Teresa’s screenplay (where the rising entrepreneur is portrayed by Elio De Capitani), and actual footage from one of the most embarrassing ‘performances’ from Berlusconi himself at the European Parliament (rewatching these clips made me cry, once again, inside).

And by the end, the whole picture feels like a pretext to invest the audience with the surprising final scene - presented as a clip of the film-within-the-film - where Moretti himself plays the role of the Prime Minister.
Without getting too much into spoilers, it is (real life) Moretti’s prediction of where the powerful man’s trajectory would lead next, and it’s an intense and chilling sequence.

In real life, the support for Moretti by a large part of the film industry can be seen in the many cameos by well-known Italian directors (such as Paolo Sorrentino, Paolo Virzì, Matteo Garrone, Giuliano Montaldo, Antonello Grimaldi, Carlo Mazzacurati).

Worth mentioning, for their comical effect, are also the (made-up) scenes from Bruno’s exploitation films from the seventies, with Margherita Buy playing sexy superspy Aidra - including a sequence focused on a food critic, a year before Ratatouille.

Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto / Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, directed by Elio Petri, co-written with Ugo Pirro, Italy, 1970 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Both Il Caimano’s dialogues and soundtrack reference - without explicitly mentioning it - this film, which I had never watched before.
It’s sort of a ‘forgotten’ Academy Award-winning picture, and shockingly it is not available from streaming services in Italy.

Contrary to my expectations, is not a story about a politician, revolving instead around a high-ranking police officer, and how his fame and status may grant immunity to his, let’s say, unorthodox ways - both in private life and in the course of his professional duties.

I’m purposely avoiding any plot details because the film masterfully managed to keep me confused for its whole first act, and then proceeded to play with my expectations up until the very end.

Aside from the inevitable seventies’ look-and-feel, it’s a very modern movie, with political relevance that transcends - unfortunately - the decade it was made. And if we consider events like those that happened in Genoa during the G8 meeting in 2001 - when Berlusconi was Prime Minister - it is clear why Moretti was inspired to write his own protest film.

The magnetism of legendary Italian actor Gian Maria Volonté manages to keep his unnamed ‘Dottore’ despicable but fascinating. Florinda Bolkan (the lead in Don’t Torture a Duckling) plays the female lead.

I definitely should dive deeper into the filmographies of both Volonté and director Petri; both died relatively young, and their political commitment should be more relevant today.